


Escape

by mad_hatta



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Delusions, Hallucinations, Hattercrow - Freeform, M/M, Mental Illness, Other, Rejection, jervis deals with rejection badly, jervis is not okay, rambling to suit the works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 13:32:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17602286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_hatta/pseuds/mad_hatta
Summary: Jervis doesn't know how to deal with being rejected by Jonathan Crane.





	Escape

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little ditty about Jervis retreating to Wonderland when he's stressed. Reality isn't his favorite place to be.

Jervis lands stunned on the old mattress, dust scattering as he looks up, eyes pleading at Crane. Jonny’s twitching fingers yearn to smack him down again.

“I _don’t. Want you_.”

His _hat_ had fallen off.

Coffee splatters on the floor and Jonathan kneels to pick up his cup, glancing once more at Tetch, menace in his gaze, scowling. The anger, the reproach, clings to him.

His _hat_!

Jervis is trembling.

His mouth is open, his lower lip quivers.

_Why?_

Oh! His.... _hat!_

Without another word, Jonathan Crane turns around, sharply opening the door and leaving the room with his burning steps, descending the creaking stairs of the old office building with reverberating clangs. His scathing stomp echoed painfully, dimming and ending with the slam of the old side entrance.

Jervis rolls on the bed, coming to his senses, groping behind him as if blind.

_Hat!_

Hand meets brim and once it’s in the only proper place— on his head!— he begins to think again.

“Jonny!” He gasps, scrambling off the dusty mattress, tripping, falling and scrambling up again off the floor, skidding into the hallway and nearly tumbling down the stairs. He rushes, wrenching open the side entrance, doorknob feeling warm in his sweaty palm, lonely from the last heated touch.

_Empty._

“Jonny...?” Like a penny down an elevator shaft.

The parking lot is cold and empty.

He can barely hear the echo of tires squealing in the distance.

Jervis lets his locked legs hold him up, stiff as stilts, with shoulders sagging, eyes searching, ears hat-flattened and primed for the first sound of something other than the truth. But it sinks in.

“... gone...?” His speaks just above a whisper. He can hardly believe it.

_But.... he said he’d stay! He_ **_promised_ ** _!_

“I’ll give you a chance,” _he said!_

_He did! He did! He_ **_did_ ** _!_

“... tea.” Jervis gulps back his words with a mouse of a whimper. In the silence his thoughts are loud enough. His fingers shiver in between his sentences, desperate for something to do. He fiddles, rubbing his fingers together. He’s nervous and terrified, feeling his inevitable plunge in mood and longing for a distraction.

At his feet the White Rabbit hops by, jerking his gaze back into the abandoned office building.

“Oh, Rabbit! You... you’re late again!” Shifting on his feet, Jervis pauses to give the parking lot one last scan, hesitating. Then… he steps back. _Away_. In.

Into the rabbit hole.

_Thunk._

_Out_ of reality... that cruel, unforgiving world!

_The outside world doesn’t matter_. After all, he can’t see it! Not with the door closed! It doesn’t have to be there if he can’t see it!

He turns to follow the waistcoat, the watch... the late... late... _late_...

“After all! Tea must be made! There’s much to discuss!”He lets loose a giggle. Even as Wonderland begins to steep into the cracks of reality around him, he can hear the cracks of reality in his own laugh, and how dreadfully hollow it sounds. “The time has come... to talk of other things...” He mutters, trying to cover the empty sound of his own stale merriment in his ears and fill it with quotes.

He crosses to his kettle on the office kitchen’s stove. How unwise it had been of the company to keep the stove hooked up. _Turn the knob! Turn the knob!_

“No time at all... it does the job! Haha!” He fiddles with his hands, feeling the knuckles of each with his opposite fingers, making sure they’re still there. “Shoes... ships... _sealing wax_!”

At what used to be the company’s break-room table sits another rabbit, though a bit shabbier and brown... or rather, it’s a Hare!

“It’s been a while, my friend!” Jervis smiles at the long-eared fellow, pleased by the way his nose twitches in response. His ears are greeted by the welcome sound of the Dormouse snoring and he gets down three cups. _The White Rabbit won’t be staying... he never stays!_ The small sound of a throat clearing behind him almost makes him start, but he looks to the side and… _there she is_!

“Alice!” Her hair is so perfect, her eyes so heavenly, her little blue dress just as he always remembered.

He gets down a fourth cup. He busies himself with the tea bags, five, six, seven, eight... _Oh but we do need strong tea, yes!_

“... t-tea...” He hesitates, wavering, remembering the special hat he had made for Jonny. Remembers the way the other man— the way he had almost appreciated him— and their _tea time_ together—

_SCREEEEEEEEEE!_

Jervis jumps, knocking his knee on the stove.

“Tea! Yes! Yes, of course! Tea!” Quickly removing the kettle from the hot burner he puts in the tea bags. His knee is smarting. He must wait as it steeps.

_Patience_.

“Oh, but do be _patient,_ Alice! Tea takes time you know! Which must be why I have so little of it! Time, that is!” Another chuckle.

It feels _wrong_.

He glances sidelong as his friends— _his Wonderland friends, of course!_ — the Hare, the ever-sleeping Dormouse— no doubt muttering “twinkle, twinkle, little bat” in his sleep— and his precious _Alice_. They smile back at him but none of them speak a word. Alice is smiling so widely. Her eyes so big, so bright. She won’t speak to him either and her eyes are on him. Watching him. He turns away from her, watching the tea. Watching it blossom brown into the water.

_Ignoring his aching knee._

He remembers Jonny... fascinating Jonny, hard at work, not a peep from him.... not a word, either. Not a word.

_Pour_.

Little. _Tea pot!_

_Pour!_

“Cream? Sugar?”

He hasn’t steeped the tea long enough yet. It _isn’t right._

His friends are too silent. They’re so silent he can _almost hear them_.

“Of course! Of course! Let’s see...” He seems deep in thought, “Cream is essential, of course, in English tea! And you all know I’ve a preference for English Breakfast… cream it is!” The Hare looks confused but Alice smiles up at him so sweetly, not widely or garishly this time. She smiles so sweetly that he nearly misses in pouring. “And let’s see... you get two lumps, three, four, six!” he adds the sugar as though there were a _science_ to it, stirring each cup with an off-kilter fervor.

The way he gathers up the cups is reckless. He gathers them two in each hand. The cups are lopsided and spilling as he bumbles to the table, setting them down, trembling hands slamming them in front of their intended recipients. Some of the tea splashes out, staining the tablecloth.

“Alice, _Alice!_ Dear, _curious_ Alice! How have you been? It’s been ages, my dear!” Jervis settles himself in a chair beside her, picking up his cup and looking toward her longingly. She looks down into her cup demurely, sparing him a small glance and a smile. “Oh, Alice... won’t you speak to me! We’ve got so much to _talk_ about! So much to catch up on! Why... you simply wouldn’t believe the manners Jonny has! Terribly atrocious but so endearing someho—” He stops short, remembering Jonny. _Gone_ Jonny. Horrible _, wonderful_ , curious Jonny. _His_ Jonny.

“O-one side m-makes you larger.... the other makes you... s-small...” He all but whimpers.

Alice simply looks at him.

The Dormouse snores.

The Hare twitches.

No one drinks their tea.

“Alice?” She simply stares down at her cup, shaking her head slowly. “Hare! My dear friend?” The rabbit sees right through him. “W... wouldn’t you like to hear... about Jonny?” This time the Hare shakes his head slowly, just as Alice did, looking almost mournful. “What is it...?” Jervis trembles slightly, worried he’s done something wrong. No one answers. No one will answer him!

“Is…. is it because he left? Do... do you know why?” His voice is shaking, his pitch wavering, a strange, strained crack slinking into the timbre of it.

The short blond jumps to his feet again, pacing wildly around the room.

“ _Why?! Why_ did he leave?” His voice barely hides his panic, confusion melding with despair. He wrings his fingers together, fidgeting. “Didn’t he like my tea? Did I not prepare it correctly? Or maybe he didn’t like my _hat_.... _ohhh_... what did I _do?_ ” Putting his head in his hands, he stops abruptly. “Why is he so _mean to me_?” Shuddering and holding back tears, he plops back down in his seat, taking a drink of his tea.

Looking to his right again at the oddly mute Alice, he’s surprised to find that he can understand her when she smiles at him timidly, as though she is speaking, though she isn’t. 

“D... do you think? Could it really be?” He’s breathless, rapt. “Truly?” His voice is trembling again, filled with hope. He tilts his head, listening to the words in the up-tilt of her mouth. “Oh! How cruel that would be! How utterly fitting of Craney!” At this he bursts out laughing, giggling and rolling in his seat. “He _would!”_ Jervis exclaims, “He _would!_ That terrible _rogue!_ He does like a good game, doesn’t he?” He jumps back up from his seat, taking his tea with him, sipping and pacing again, this time giddy, a bounce in his step and gleam in his eye.

“Oh! But what do I _do_ about it?” He pauses, lifting his tea to his lips. His eyes flit over to the Hare in an appreciative gaze. “Certainly.... that would be a _grand idea, indeed!_ ” Giggling madly, he resumes his pacing. “Oh, but I must make certain everything is _right_ for him! He wants me to take the initiative to _scare him_ , it has to be _perfect!_ ” He downs the rest of his tea, absently reaching for another cup— the Dormouse’s?— leaving his empty one in it’s place.

“Yes... you can... _always_ take _more_ than nothing! Haha!”


End file.
